Tag: recap

“The Dragon and the Wolf” isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t quite make up for the narrative failings of the previous two episodes, but it’s spectacular in terms of the acting, directing, and cinematography, and a massive 81 minute runtime means that there’s more space for everything to play out instead of being rushed. The scenes in King’s Landing felt like a return to GoT of old, and the confrontation between Tyrion and Cersei may be my favourite scene of the season.

It’s a very well-paced episode, but its greatest strength lies in the way it weaves its character arcs. Arguably, there’s as much character development in “The Dragon and the Wolf” than there was in the previous six episodes of the season. Tyrion, Jaime, Cersei, Daenerys and Jon all have a mini-arc of their own in this episode, and you can make the same argument for Theon, Arya and Sansa.

My issues with “The Dragon and the Wolf” are mostly limited to minor quibbles (Jon’s name is Aegon? Seriously?) and the fact that it doesn’t do quite enough to resolve some of the season’s earlier storytelling issues. Yes, Sansa and Arya were revealed to be on the same side, but that doesn’t excuse her weird behaviour in “Beyond the Wall”. Also, the lack of #CLEGANEBOWL was concerning, but #BoatSex mostly made up for it.

King’s Landing would be the logical place to start this review. I was a little concerned to see that the first dialogue of the episode was some of the usual ‘witty banter’ that Benioff and Weiss are known for, but the conversation quickly took a turn away from cocks and eunuchs to something more prescient. I don’t know how Grey Worm got to King’s Landing, or who controls Casterly Rock, or how Euron sailed back round Westeros (again), but I’ll let these problems slide, for now.

The first 12 minutes of the episode concern the buildup to the parley in the Dragonpit, and it was good to see the reunion between Podrick, Bronn and Tyrion – something I was pleasantly surprised by, as I’d completely forgot it was happening. Brienne and the Hound also bonded over their not-quite-parental ‘love’ of Arya Stark. The location used for the Dragonpit and the scenes surrounding it is beautiful, and the long takes are fantastic. More on the cinematography later.

Things get going once our main characters reach the Dragonpit. Dany comes soaring on her dragon, in a scene that, frankly, is a little shoddy, but would have been impossible for the VFX team to make believable. Everyone shares some tense looks. We get teased for Cleganebowl, though ultimately the brawl that was promised never takes place. But that’s okay, because this is a talky episode, and a massive fight in the middle would have been a bit distracting. On that note, I can see why they got Jeremy Podeswa to helm this one, because the man is a master at long, complicated dialogue scenes. Between his excellent blocking and direction and the damn-near-flawless performances of all the actors (both the five principals and the supporting cast), the whole Dragonpit scene is one of the show’s most memorable, and it doesn’t rely on fancy VFX. And to give credit where credit is due, Benioff and Weiss wrote some truly outstanding material for this scene.

However, the best scene of the episode is the one which comes after, where Tyrion ominously walks back into the Red Keep and sits down for an audience with Cersei. Lena Headey’s Emmy is long-overdue, but if there’s ever been a scene that is Emmy gold, I think this is it. Headey and Dinklage have some of the best screen chemistry in the entire show, playing off each other’s subtle cues perfectly. Headey’s Cersei is like an onion; peel away the layers and you will reveal a vulnerable soul, but beneath that vulnerability is iron, and beneath that are yet more layers. It’s a strange world where a woman’s reluctance to kill her brother – one of the show’s most beloved characters – is heartbreaking. And as for Dinklage, his performance opposite Headey reminded me of why I loved his character so much in Seasons 1-4. This is also one of Dinklage’s very best episodes, matching up to “Baelor” and “Blackwater” – the former of which he won an Emmy for. It was one hell of a performance. And once again, this scene was impeccably directed and shot.

Cersei comes out and proclaims that she’s going to fight alongside the Northmen. Of course, this is a lie – like her pregnancy, I suspect – and I think Tyrion knows it. Nonetheless, Jon and Dany accept that this is the best that they’re going to get, and head off to Dragonstone together. The rest of the King’s Landing arc is the build-up to Jaime finally saying what we’ve been waiting for him to say since Season 5: inspired by Brienne and Tyrion, he tells Cersei that if she wants to take back the Seven Kingdoms, she can bloody well do it alone. There’s a moment where Ser Gregor threatens Jaime – to which I had a genuine “holy shit” reaction – but then, in a brilliant scene that parallels the Cersei-Tyrion encounter from earlier – she shows mercy once again, and displays some weakness under that cold veneer. She heads off after him, but stops himself. She must be a queen.

Over on Dragonstone, there’s a council meeting where Jorah attempts to subtly cockblock Jon, but the real point of these scenes are the conclusion to Theon’s fantastic arc in this episode. While I felt the “I have no balls” trick was a little cheesy and over-the-top, it does a wonderful job in keeping to the ironborn idea that “what is dead may never die”. Theon gets back up, beats the shit out of ratface, and then falls down in the sand. This shot, designed by DP Gregory Middleton, with Theon in the foreground and the bluffs of Dragonstone behind him, is absolutely perfect.

Up at Winterfell, Littlefinger gets schooled. Sophie Turner’s performance as Sansa was so genuine that I believed that Sansa had fallen for his shtick, and that this was ‘bad writing by those untalented hacks D & D’. So I was pleasantly surprised when the scene was turned on its head, and Sansa, in a brilliantly written scene, turns Littlefinger’s words on him and has him comprehensively torn to pieces. Then there’s Aidan Gillen’s reaction; he goes from mild confusion to desperation to a complete broken man in a scene that demonstrates the full extent of the actor’s ability. Farewell, Littlefinger. I won’t miss you… but at the same time, like all good villains, I think I will.

On the whole, I still don’t think this justifies the Winterfell storyline this year, which has been damnably poor in places. Though at the same time, I don’t think Benioff and Weiss could have conceivably written anything else. Winterfell is “on hold” this season, and for the plot to last until the finale, Littlefinger has to make some dumb decisions and Bran has to not bother talking to his sisters.

The scene ends with Sansa’s “the pack survives” line from the trailer. I was pleased to see the reprisal of the battlements shot from “The Winds of Winter”. Indeed, I would not be surprised if this shot closes out the series, with the surviving Starks standing solemnly together on the wallwalk as we cut to black one last time.

Sam turns up at Winterfell unexpectedly late in the episode, and immediately shares his findings with Bran, in a scene that felt a bit ‘off’ for reasons I can’t really describe. Bran then does some shady stuff with the fire and transports himself to Rhaegar and Lyanna’s wedding. I found it strange that Bran didn’t already know about this; considering that he’s done so much ‘research’ into Jon’s lineage, his findings didn’t really amount to anything. After so many years, we finally see Rhaegar… and he’s a bit disappointing, looking a bit like a discount Viserys. Personally I think would have been better to tease us with the joining of hands, but not to show Rhaegar’s face, but it’s not a huge problem, I suppose. This scene is intercut with Jon and Dany having tastefully directed sex on a boat… #BoatSex it wasn’t everything it had been cracked up to be, but then again, what more do you want? Also, Jon Snow’s name is Aegon, apparently. I still think Aemon would have been a much better name for him, but it’s not like everyone’s going to be calling him Aegon next season, is it?

The episode ends with the Wall coming down. The Night King soars in on Viserion and burns the whole thing to rubble, allowing the army of the dead to swarm through the gap while an ice dragon soars overhead. It was what I’d been expecting since the start of the season, but seeing the great icy monolith – one of the few remaining constants in Westeros – come crashing down truly emphasized the power of the foe that the Seven Kingdoms will be facing in the wars ahead.

“The Dragon and the Wolf” is the episode that has rescued Season 7. It’s not a quiet episode, but it is reflective and thoughtful, and the reunions we saw here will not be easily forgotten. More than that, from a visual and cinematographical standpoint, this is possibly the most beautiful episode in the entire show. Whatever missteps Podeswa and Middleton made in previous seasons are always and completely forgiven. I’d be surprised to see this director back for Season 8, but with this sort of legacy, does it really matter?

It would be remiss not to recognise Michelle Clapton and Ramin Djawadi for their roles in this episode. Having everyone all in black has been unsettling, but it has paid off, and Djawadi’s score – particularly “Truth” and “Army of the Dead” – has been exemplary.

As for Benioff and Weiss… well, they’ve made some mis-steps with this season, notably in “Beyond the Wall”, but if you want proof that they can write, look no further than this episode. Oh, I’ll nitpick them to death, but I respect these ‘talentless hacks’ really.

“Beyond the Wall”, the latest in David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s list of inspid, blandly-titled Game of Thrones episodes, is arguably the episode that encapsulates the best and the worst of Season 7. I imagine this will be a divisive episode among the majority of the fandom; it’s certainly an episode where you can make an equally competent argument for it being among the show’s best or among its worst.

Unfortunately, I fall into the latter category of reviewers. “Beyond the Wall” is very similar to “Battle of the Bastards” in the regard that it sacrifices logic for action, but unlike BotB, its strengths are less impressive, and its failures are more pronounced. With BotB, I enjoyed the ride all the way through, and its logical inconsistencies only occurred to me on subsequent rewatches and on reading through forums. “Beyond the Wall”, however, is the first episode where the sheer graceless stupidity of the plot has negatively affected my first viewing experience.

My issue with “Beyond the Wall” is that it is downright insulting to anyone who puts a bit of thought into what they’ve just seen. Benioff and Weiss’s writing is downright dumb, and of a far lower quality than what I’ve come to expect from them, and they aren’t helped by Alan Taylor’s directing, which felt like an extended montage of ‘cool stuff’ instead of a cohesive narrative. I won’t deny that the big moments, like Viserion’s death and resurrection, were very well done, and will be game-changing, but as a whole, the episode left a sour taste in my mouth that I haven’t experienced since “No One”.

I’ll start with the Arya and Sansa scenes, as these will be the easiest to review… but at the same time, they managed to be the most awful. The lack of cohesive storytelling left me baffled, and I did wonder whether the scenes had been edited into the wrong order. They make no sense. This aspect of the episode was a colossal mess, saved only by Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams who both try their best, but ultimately fail to overcome a God-awful script, and ultimately give performances which are quite average compared to their usual high standards – especially Williams, who seems deathly flat.

The Winterfell plotline in Season 7 is genuinely worse than Dorne in Season 5. Dorne was merely bad, but Winterfell is on a whole other level, as beyond the reunions of the three Starks, it seems that any character who goes to Winterfell actually regresses – most notably Arya, but also Sansa and Brienne, who both seem to be running in circles that go nowhere. In their quest for ‘cool moments’, Benioff and Weiss have chosen to alter their characters at random to create a contrived, ‘exciting’ plot. Arya seems to have forgotten her “master assassin” training to become “a hypocritical and completely irrational bitch”. Sansa fares slightly better, but again the issue is simple: the Winterfell plotline is a slower-paced story that might have worked in the context of Seasons 1-6, but is completely out of place here, requiring its characters to just sit down and do nothing while everyone else in Westeros zooms around at 10,000 miles per hour. It also requires Bran – the all-seeing eye of the Seven Kingdoms – to do nothing at all.

I do have one outlandish theory – that Arya killed Littlefinger at some point between “Eastwatch” and this episode, and is now playing a game with Sansa, seeing how suggestible she is to southern whims. However, with what happened last year in “No One”, I don’t have high hopes for this, and I’m expecting the contrived drama to be solved in an equally stupid way.

(Also, the budget must be gone, because there are apparently no people in Winterfell save for Arya, Sansa, Brienne and Littlefinger.)

Meanwhile on Dragonstone, Peter Dinklage put on a firm performance, but again it falls into Benioff and Weiss’s mentality of telling instead of showing, forcing us through exposition that only serves to fill up space in the episode and other than that, just seems like an empty void. Then Dany receives the raven from Eastwatch and flies off to the land of magic and mystery.

North of the Wall, we open with some good conversational scenes. I particularly enjoyed Jon and Jorah’s conversation about the Old Bear and Longclaw. It was one of those scenes where the conclusion was entirely predictable, but it was fun to watch anyway. And even though I don’t love Jorah as a character, I can appreciate that Iain Glen is a fantastic actor. And the shared insults between Tormund and the Hound was the funniest conversation of this season; I might think Brienne is doomed to end up with Jaime, but I can’t fault the Giantsbane for trying.

Some time later, Gendry manages to run all the way back to Eastwatch (at the outside, that’s surely 10 miles or more, making at least 2 hours running time in heavy snow). He then has Davos send a raven Concorde airplane to Daenerys, requiring the bird to fly for about 1200 miles (24-30 hours), and then fly a dragon back (12 hours), while Jon and his crew of Dumb Cunts stay on their island for the better part of two days. I wouldn’t be surprised if they cooked and ate Thoros’s corpse during this time, because given the stupidity of this plan in the first place, Jon probably didn’t bother to take any provisions north with them.

D & D seem to have forgotten that they have a boy who can send messages instantly over at Winterfell, which would be a much more plausible explanation. Bran could inform Daenerys of the circumstances north of the Wall – and Melisandre, if she’d stuck around, would also have worked. That way, we wouldn’t have to see Dany until late in the episode, which would have made her arrival a genuine surprise.

Either way, they’re fine until the Hound throws a rock at the wights, which is apparently the signal for the mass attack, as the Night King didn’t realise that the ice was weak until it was demonstrably such. Anyhow, a moment later, the entire wight army surges across the ice, and then there’s a battle of epic and preposterous proportions, where Jon and his band of 5 named characters and 3 redshirts, fight off the army of 10,000 dead men. No prizes for guessing who died. Even so, it’s faintly ridiculous that they manage to hold on for as long as they do. There are some nice ‘hero shot’ moments, and the choreography of the sequence is outstanding, but the whole thing is slightly unbelievable, and there are no stakes and there is no horror whatsoever.

Props to Jonathan Freeman for the cinematography throughout this episode, and to Alan Taylor for the directing, though I don’t think this was his finest hour on Thrones; the battle sequences in the latter half were entirely without suspense, even though that was mostly due to D & D’s unwillingness to create any tension by, you know, actually killing people other than Wildling #4. I expected us to lose Beric as well as Thoros, and Jorah, and possibly even Gendry. Back in a time when Game of Thrones had consequences, we almost certainly would have. Instead, Thoros dies, and… oh, that’s it.

Oops, I forgot about Viserion. This was the most unexpected twist of the episode, and it was possibly the finest triumph of visual effects ever seen on Game of Thrones; the dragon plumetting into the icy waters, blood and fire exploding out. And I can’t deny that I was in the edge of my seat as I watched Dany and her band of misfits fly away, abandoning Jon… but then I realised that the only reason they had to abandon Jon was because he’d entered a stupid battle rage, holding off the wights for no reason other than a shot of him staring dramatically at the Night King, and so he could drown, then be revealed as ‘not dead’, then get surrounded by wights, then get saved by Uncle Benjen, then have Benjen sacrifice himself even though there was enough room for both of them on that horse.

I’ve heard people asking why the Night King didn’t just kill Drogon instead of Viserion. I’m going to assume that he thought Viserion was a more immediate threat to his army – though this is a bit flimsy, given that he threw an ice spear at Drogon almost immediately after. I’m assuming the Night King set up this trap deliberately so he could get hold of a dragon, in which case he must have been chuffed to find out that people as stupid as Jon Snow exist.

After Jon’s miraculous and ‘unexpected’ escape, he and Dany find themselves on a boat. There is genuine chemistry between Kit Harrington and Emilia Clarke, and the romance is one of Thrones’s more believable ones. Emilia Clarke’s acting was superb this episode, something I doubted I’d ever say, covering the full range between vulnerability and empowerment and reflective sadness. Her realisation that the white walkers exist, and her reflection to Jon, is one of her finest moments as an actress. At the same time, lines like “thank you, Dany”, and the ensuing nonsense, prove that the kudos should go to Harrington and Clarke, not Benioff and Weiss.

Overall, what should have been one of Game of Thrones’s finest episodes turned out to be one of its most disappointing because of the atrocious writing, proving, once and for all, that lots of explosions are no substitute for a compelling story.

P.S. Kudos to Michele Clapton and the costumes department. Dany’s winter dress/gown/thing is my favourite costume of this season.

This review contains SPOILERS for the fifth episode of Season 7 of Game of Thrones entitled “Eastwatch”, and for all episodes preceding it, and for the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books by George R.R. Martin, up to and including sample chapters from The Winds of Winter.

Every so often in Game of Thrones, there’s an episode which is bound to slip under the radar, usually due to the fact that it follows a bombastic extravaganza such as “The Spoils of War”. Hence it is the highest praise that this week’s episode, the somewhat insipidly titled “Eastwatch”, is probably Thrones’s best ‘quiet episode’ since Season 3’s “Kissed by Fire”. Indeed, in terms of the sheer magnitude of the episode, it probably de-thrones “Kissed by Fire”, being an episode full of massive revelations and some of the most realistic dialogue the show has seen this season. It proves that, aside from an occasional over-reliance on humour, hell, this Dave Hill guy can write.

“Eastwatch” is a significant improvement on Hill’s three previous contributions to the show: Season 5’s “Sons of the Harpy”, where he only wrote three-quarters of a script, Season 6’s “Home”, a solid if occasionally baffling episode, and the creation of an irritating child known as Olly. Yes, it does feature some Hill-esque leaps of logic, but these can be attributed to Benioff & Weiss’s story arc more than anything else. In some regards, “Eastwatch” is an extended teaser to next week’s hotly anticipated “Episode 66” (love the title), but it stands up really well on its own, with a focus on ‘getting the gang together’, heist-style, for Jon Snow’s Stupidest Plan Ever™.

I expected Jaime and Bronn to end up being captured by Daenerys, so I was both surprised and somewhat baffled when they suddenly turned up coughing and spluttering on a riverbank and managed to stagger back to King’s Landing. Nonetheless, I think the alternative storyline would have been somewhat predictable – and hey, I’m not complaining about Jaime’s survival. It has become clear to Jaime that Cersei cannot win the war ahead, which he’s definitely correct about, but she refuses to listen, with Lena Headey channeling a strange, irrational version of Tywin Lannister. As always, Jaime and Cersei’s scenes are a delight to watch, but the real treat this week was that Jaime had – wait for it – actual character development.

At the battlefield, Dany burns Randyll Tarly and his son Dickon alive. I have to apologise for my initial disdain for Dickon – yes, his head is too small for his massive shoulders, but that doesn’t change the fact that: a) Tom Hopper played the role really well, and b) he went out like a champ. A stupid champ, perhaps, but a weirdly endearing one. And I never thought I’d say this, but I was sad to see Randyll Tarly go, come the end. This was also Matt Shakman’s finest moment of the episode; those two burning pyres in front of the kneeling Lannister men is something I fully expect to come up on the Beautiful Death poster.

Over on Dragonstone, Jon touches Drogon – not as thrilling as it might have been, since it was an obvious consequence – but still an interesting scene nonetheless because of the implications about his parentage (more on that later). Also, Jorah turns up. The scene was shot a bit strangely if you ask me – making Dany and Jorah seem like long-lost lovers rather than old friends, though Ser Friendzone lived up to his name when Dany hugged him. I’m finally starting to like Jorah, which, coupled with what seemed like a very fatalistic reunion with Dany, makes me think he’s almost certainly going to die in the next episode. And to be honest, that might be the right choice. Once he’s had a heart-to-heart with Jon about Lord Commander Mormont, I think Ser Jorah’s arc will have reached its natural conclusion.

Meanwhile, Tyrion and Varys have a heart-to-heart in the throne room. It’s a really good scene for both Peter Dinklage and Conleth Hill, with some pithy dialogue, but in the end, it fails because of a mentality of ‘telling instead of showing’. One of the areas where the Thrones writers frequently fail is in that they think their audiences are dumb; in their world, understatement is a dying art. We could have gained so much more from having the meaning of this scene injected into the performances of Dinklage and Hill than having it spelled out. But Varys got screentime, so that’s a good thing.

The best section of the episode for me was the portion taking place in King’s Landing, with the Davos/Tyrion buddy team. I was surprised that Davos seems so jovial about the man who killed his son, but that really speaks in testament to the strength of his character and the depth of his belief about the living dead. But the Davos and Tyrion buddy cop drama is fantastic. Both of them then head off to their separate meetings with Gendry and Jaime respectively. It’s always pleasing when the writers up the pace, because I didn’t think we were going to see the Jaime-Tyrion reunion until the next episode, at the very least, but in the end, it was pretty anti-climactic. Based on this, I’m almost certain that Jaime and Tyrion are going to meet again by the end of the season, probably in the finale, for an extended period of time. Meanwhile, Davos heads down to a forge to meet Gendry, because where else is he going to be. Having seen Joe Dempsie’s name in the credits, I wasn’t surprised by his appearance. I’ve always liked Gendry, even if I’m not his biggest fan, and my feelings of hype only increased when he picked up the warhammer. The warhammer! We’re in for some good times ahead, I think (providing he doesn’t die in Episode 6).

The King’s Landing section ends with a very Dave Hill scene; some gold cloaks come to confront Davos, who turns them away with bribes and fermented crab. Now, obviously, this is meant to make a point about the corruption and greed that pervades King’s Landing… nah, actually, it isn’t. It was a fun scene, but nothing to write home about. And I was glad to see that Gendry didn’t bother going along with Davos’s ruse about him being some bloke called ‘Clovis’ (gods, what a stupid name) when they got back to Dragonstone. It allows to see the Ned/Robert dynamic as it must have been, bastard and bastard. Davos, meanwhile, drops the best line of the episode – “nobody mind me; all I’ve ever done is live to a ripe old age.” I swear, if they kill off Davos, someone at HBO is getting beheaded.

Also, by the way, Cersei’s pregnant. I’m not sure I believe that, because it seems a little late in the game to be introducing a baby to the mix. Also, that would go against Maggy the Frog’s prophecy (though if the baby is born, that could be intriguing in itself because it means Maggy’s prophecy was utter bullshit, which opens up some very interesting possibilities). And if this child is born to Cersei and Jaime… poor kid. You saw what happened to the last three.

(On this note, I think a baby is only possible if GoT implements in a time-skip of a year between Seasons 7 and 8. This might sound far-fetched, but I can see it happening – the war of men and the Others reaches a stalemate, and we end up with this.)

Winterfell was the least interesting part of this week’s episode, feeling somewhat detached from the main plot. Littlefinger’s plotting something, most likely some plan to put Sansa on the throne instead of Jon, and it seems that he intended for Arya to find the letter he left in his bed. We also get a really creepy shot of him leering from behind a pillar. Other than that, though, it’s most uneventful in the castle, though Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner have really great screen chemistry. Which isn’t that surprising when you think about, though I imagine that Sansa/Arya scenes will make up 90% of this season’s blooper reel.

In Oldtown, Gilly drops the FUCKING BOMBSHELL TO END ALL BOMBSHELLS, and Sam just brushes it off, ranting about Maester Somebody and his 17,000 shits. He decides to leave Oldtown in the end, since the war in the North is more important. I imagine we’ll see him at Winterfell by the end of the season, possibly via Horn Hill and the Wall. While Sam’s venture south has been one of my favourite storylines, and I’ve loved the Citadel setting, it’ll be good to see him back with some familiar faces… unless, that is, he runs into Euron while sailing north past Casterly Rock.

Anyway, with regard to the Motherfucking Bombshell™, it turns out that “Prince Ragger” had his marriage annulled and then married another woman, presumably Lyanna Stark. In which case, R+L=J is true, and Jon is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Of course, Bran probably knows all of this already, and we’re just waiting for the opportune moment for the reveal, which will likely be in the finale.

Meanwhile, Jon and his allies sail to Eastwatch (the title sequence does a crazy rightwards pan from the Wall, which left me goggle-eyed), where the Fellowship of the Ring the Magnificent Seven is formed – oh, and some background extras. They set out to pursue the Stupidest Plan Ever™; at a guess, attempting to capture a wight is not going to go down well, at all. My guess is that Jorah won’t make it back, and that Beric, Thoros and Tormund will also die. Sandor’s still got a story left (Cleganebowl) so he can’t die, Jon is… well, Jon, and Gendry only just came back. Game of Thrones would surely never kill off a character in the episode immediately after they came back for the first time in three seasons…

Ahem. Osha would like to have a word with me.

So yeah, that’s about it. “Eastwatch” is a really solid episode with some great diplomacy, some high quality dialogue, and the promise of next week to live up to. Since Alan Taylor is directing this – his only episode of the season, I should add, and therefore one that seems likely to be pretty GOAT. I’m expecting big things. IMDb 10/10 rating. And for once, I think we’ll get them. This one looks to be Hardhome 2.0, even if the trailer isn’t giving anything away. And since it’s 71 minutes long, I’m looking forward to big developments in the other Seven Kingdoms, not just North of the Wall.

This review contains SPOILERS for the third episode of Season 7 of Game of Thrones entitled “The Queen’s Justice”, and for all episodes preceding it, and for the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books by George R.R. Martin, up to and including sample chapters from The Winds of Winter.

Probably the fastest-paced episode of Game of Thrones yet, “The Queen’s Justice” is an episode full of big moments that really emphasises the changes in David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s priorities as writers. Continuity and timelines have ceased to exist, in favour of getting to the meat of things. I think, in this regard, Benioff and Weiss have finally resolved the narrative problems that plagued Seasons 5 and 6: a lack of certainty over whether Game of Thrones should retain its usual slow dramatic pacing, or move on into a different type of storytelling entirely.

That being said, this ‘new era’ of Thrones is not entirely new. Indeed, the current season’s pacing can be likened to Season 1, albeit with a few more logical inconsistencies. But even then, its refreshing to have reached what seems to be a definite midpoint by the end of episode 3. Had these storylines been taking place last year, we’d be up to episode 5 or 6 by now.

“The Queen’s Justice” chooses to tell its stories in big, blocky chunks, a structure that has become characteristic of Benioff and Weiss’s writing. In the case of this episode, I think that was the right decision. Narratively, the whole thing holds together very well. However, the whole episode is underscored by a sort of staleness. You know that the writing could be better, but it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of the best shows on TV, but the writing of individual scenes can be atrocious and there are some truly dreadful lines – from this episode, Euron’s crass “Does she like it gentle or rough? A finger in the bum?” was particularly abrasive.

It may sound like I am being unecessarily harsh here. I enjoyed “The Queen’s Justice”, and objectively it was the strongest episode of the season, but it did feel a little sketchy in places. Every scene had something slightly off about it, be it the actors’ performances (a couple were shaky this week), the directing, or the writing itself. There was, however, one scene that was outstanding (so much so that I’ve italicised its sheer outstandingness), but I’ll come to that later.

We’ll start with Dragonstone, which dominated the episode. I was pleasantly surprised that this instalment didn’t delay when it came to getting to the chewy bits. Tyrion and Jon have a reunion on the beach that serves as a ‘hype starter’ before the main course, somewhat mirroring Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon’s reunion in Season 1. Director Mark Mylod makes good use of the Gaztelugatxe staircase location, though Jon and Davos’s ground dive seemed a little over-comical, and can’t have done much for the reputation of the King of the North. They then go to the throne room, where Jon and Dany are finally in the same room, and…

…it’s a little underwhelming, actually. It’s a great set, and a scene of huge significance, but for some reason it never really clicks. Mylod doesn’t really use the space well, and the actors and camera are both completely static. An empty mood isn’t really what I wanted for the first meeting of the ‘golden trio’. Oddly enough, none of the three ‘main’ performers play the scene particularly well; instead, it is Liam Cunningham who is standout as professional hype man Davos Seaworth. Missandei lists all of Dany’s titles, to which he seriously replies, “This is Jon Snow”, dialogue which serves to highlight the differences between the two rulers. The dialogue is mostly quite good on the face of things, though there are little irksome moments that validate a claim that “the show isn’t what it used to be” – the ‘figure of speech’ joke doesn’t really work, and no one appears to have told Peter Dinklage that his lines don’t always need to be funny. Also, in places it feels like Dany is spinning the same “I am the queen” yarn for the ten thousandth time, which doesn’t come across well.

However, the real kicker of the Dragonstone scenes is that Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington have unexpectedly poor screen chemistry. Mark Mylod doesn’t help this by constantly framing their scenes in a bland shot-reverse-shot formula, which means that the two are hardly ever in the frame at the same time. The result is that it seems like Jon Snow – still wearing his Northern clothes, which doesn’t help – has been Photoshopped into Dragonstone, but isn’t really there. On the other hand, Harrington and Dinklage have great chemistry, and their scenes were a joy to watch, though Tyrion still suffers from a sort of “my lines are always funny” syndrome.

Moving over to King’s Landing: there’s a slightly cheesy sequence with Euron, but everything with Euron is slightly surreal and cheesy, and that’s what I like about him, honestly. I’m never quite sure whether his lines are intentionally atrocious, but Pilou Asbaek sells it. The scene with Cersei and Ellaria is one of the best of the episodes, with the underrated Indira Varma perfectly matched and contrasting Headey’s Cersei. It’s a dark, tense scene, ultimately poetic if not wholly unexpected, and I have to applaud Benioff and Weiss for not succumbing to Gregor-Clegane-based bloodlust. This is something that could come straight out of Martin’s novels, and I mean that as high praise. There are two more scenes in King’s Landing – the Jaime and Cersei sex scene, where Cersei ironically becomes the only person in the episode to willingly kneel, and then the Iron Bank scene, where Mark Gatiss smoothly tells Cersei that she needs to pay back her loans. Honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention beyond trying to think up nonsensical Gatiss-based puns: “oh, you’re in the Great Game now”, “you’ll sleep no more after this”, “she’s a real crimson horror”, and so forth.

On to Winterfell. I think Sophie Turner is best in scenes like these, and Sansa seems to be back on a (mostly) stable character arc. Littlefinger, meanwhile, is a bit all over the place. D & D seem to have taken the description of him from the Honest Trailer – “the sneaky dude” – and have gone a bit too far with it. He’s also now “the monologue guy”, delivering a speech about Sansa fighting every battle in her mind, which sounds good in a trailer, but within the episode it seems to come out of nowhere. I think Littlefinger’s ‘great-game-based’ speech might be some sort of big thematic link across the episode, but I didn’t really pick it out here. Then he slithers off creepily back to his hole, leaving his motivations (or lack thereof) deliberately unclear. It’s all a bit weird.

Bran – not Arya – then turns up at Winterfell, which would have been a surprise if I hadn’t watched the credits sequence. Meera’s also there, looking in sore need of therapy and a spa day. Again, Turner seems to play this scene well, but someone seems to have told Isaac Hempstead-Wright that the best thing to do would be to stare distantly into space all the time. Which works fine for the three-eyed raven, but it’s a disservice to the years he spent as an actual human character called Bran Stark. Indeed, Bran doesn’t seem to really exist any more, only some weird kid with no conversational skills, which is saddening really, given how much development he’s gone through over the years. And frankly, I don’t see why Bran has been entirely consumed by mysticism. He’s still Bran, isn’t he? Isn’t he?

There’s a brief interlude at the Citadel, which doesn’t really do much other than confirm the events of last week – a somewhat disappointing conclusion to Jorah’s greyscale arc – but I wonder if Sam might find something about the white walkers in all those papers. The episode’s concluding sequence takes us to Casterly Rock, where ‘everyone’s least favourite part of Team Dany’, the dull Grey Worm, manages a conquest of the Rock. I have several issues with the fact that the Lannisters seem to have left behind only a skeleton garrison, most notably for the implications on Lannister prestige and morale that the fall of the Rock will have. I saw the sewer conquest coming, but it was the right way to conclude this arc, and I found Tyrion’s voice-over to be an effective way of linking this isolated conquest back to the episode’s main narrative. Even so, the scene felt somewhat underwhelming, given how hyped I was about Casterly Rock, and the Unsullied charging in with their spears in narrow passages was quite irritating. As for Euron’s sudden arrival… well, I’ve given up trying to understand the passage of time in Game of Thrones.

We then cut to Highgarden, where Jaime, Randyll Tarly, Bronn, and Randyll’s goat-faced son (sorry, but he just looks like a massive twat) take the castle in an easy conquest. Mark Mylod is consistently very good at tracking shots, and the one that takes Jaime from the castle gates up to Olenna’s solar is one of my favourites.

However, things really get going in the final scene of the episode. And I say this honestly: I think the final scene of “The Queen’s Justice” is probably the best dialogue scene since Robert and Cersei in “The Wolf and the Lion”, or possibly even better. Dame Diana Rigg proves one last time why she is an international treasure, with a single-scene performance that encapsulates Olenna Tyrell’s character in a neat, final summary. It’s exquisite to watch, and though Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays second fiddle, the man’s reactions are legendary. You can see the horror in his eyes when Olenna tells him the truth, as he realises that nearly every event since Joffrey’s death is the result of her machinations. Should he just run her through with his sword? Yes, perhaps he should, but that would only consolidate Olenna’s victory in a moment that is just that – her final, pyrrhic victory over Cersei Lannister. She has driven a wedge between the Lannister siblings at last, and I hope this finally marks the start of Jaime’s long-delayed redemption arc. This part of the episode feels like it was written by someone else entirely. “Tell Cersei I want her to know it was me.” That is one hell of a line, and the weight of the implications it carries… it is one final thorn in the lion’s paw, and this may be the one that kills it. This is the queen’s justice, indeed. And yes, Olenna Tyrell dies, but in doing so, she denies the old adage from Season 1.

Because Olenna Tyrell dies, but Olenna Tyrell wins.

Notes and Side Bits:

The biggest weakness of this episode is that Benioff and Weiss fall into the mentality of telling rather than showing. One of the few things I hate about Thrones (and this is the book elitist in me speaking) is that it constantly assumes its viewers are stupid. Obviously, this is necessary for the casual audience who don’t remember events from “The Mountain and the Viper” and “Mother’s Mercy”, but it’s still bloody irritating. Callbacks should be a treat for the astute viewer, not some big red button blaring on and off, going “DO YOU REMEMBER THIS?” Also, D & D have an irritating inability to write inferred dialogue. Everything has to be said out loud; they don’t trust their audience to make any sort of intelligent assumptions based on what they’ve seen. This is a two-way street, you know – otherwise it’s not going to be long before we get lines like “I’m Arya Stark, your sister from Season 1.”

I loved the end credits theme, a new rendition of “The Rains of Castamere”. RoC always gets me in the mood.

Mylod was alright this episode, but I thought his work was stronger on “Stormborn”. The episode ends on a weird wide shot that is held for a couple of seconds too long to let the RoC motif play out. I think an Olenna close-up would have suited better, but choosing to show Jaime’s departure from the room means Mylod has to switch to the wide.

The best acting this episode comes courtesy of Dame Diana Rigg as Olenna Tyrell, of course. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) was also very good, and Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) had his finest performance in ages.